As the director of artist collaboration for Meow Wolf, Han Santana-Sayles \u201915 says she is \u201cessentially, a curator.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the company she works for and the spaces it designs are more difficult to define. Forbes <\/em>has coined Meow Wolf an \u201cimmersive arts innovator\u201d; The New York Times <\/em>called it a \u201ctourism juggernaut\u201d; and the Santa Fe Reporter<\/em>, the alternative newsweekly where Meow Wolf began in 2008 as an informal collective of DIY artists and opened an official entertainment venue in 2016, labeled it the \u201cSanta Fe arts mega-corp.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI describe it often as a narrative-driven, immersive art exhibit,\u201d says Santana-Sayles, at the same time admitting those words don\u2019t necessarily draw something immediately to mind. \u201cBut,\u201d she adds, \u201cit does kind of evade description because it is a lot of different things \u2026 a new type of industry, which is a model that hasn\u2019t existed exactly like it before.\u201d<\/p>\n Think art exhibit meets museum meets storytelling experience \u2014 with a sci-fi or fantastical theme. Visitors can interact with almost every element in some way, such as opening a refrigerator and walking through it to an interdimen-sional travel agency or crawling through a fireplace and ending up in a large Mastodon cave.<\/p>\n \u201cDescribing it kind of helps [people] grasp that there\u2019s a narrative element to it,\u201d Santana-Sayles says, but \u201cit\u2019s more fun for me to just show them what I\u2019m talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n She is well-suited to share narrative elements after having majored in comparative literature with a focus in feminist and gender studies at CC. That\u2019s part of her job when engaging with collaborating artists \u2014 creatives who work in a guest capacity to develop their own unique rooms, dioramas, murals, sculpture projects, and the like.<\/p>\n In addition to maintaining relationships with artists, her responsibilities include compiling recommendations of artists for the creative directors to review for a variety of projects, while keeping in mind the creative values Meow Wolf holds.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look for work that\u2019s kaleidoscopic \u2014 so, colorful, playful, layered, and multifaceted. Work that draws people in and expresses some kind of depth,\u201d she says. \u201cWe look for work that\u2019s maximal,\u201d which she adds doesn\u2019t mean that every square inch of surface is covered \u2014 though it can be \u2014 but that the work is detailed and thoughtful.<\/p>\n Next is \u201cmind-bending.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the tenets of Meow Wolf is that we\u2019re trying to challenge our guests to get outside their own boxes and parameters that they have for themselves and question the world in a different way,\u201d Santana-Sayles says. \u201cSo things that are mind-bending are really interesting and important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n And finally, inclusive \u2014 in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n For nearly four years, Santana-Sayles has been working primarily on the third-to-open Meow Wolf location, which debuted in summer 2021 in Denver. (The second-to-open site is in Las Vegas, with two more in the works for Washington, D.C., and Phoenix.) She\u2019s proud of the Denver project because it involved predominately Colorado-based artists: Of the 130 artists, 120 are Coloradans.<\/p>\n \u201cIt also was really important to me that [Denver] would be the most diverse exhibit and project that Meow Wolf has ever done,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n And it is.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than half of the exhibit is women-identifying folks. Around a third of the participants overall are people of color, and around a third are LGBTQ,\u201d Santana-Sayles says. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of all the artists that we\u2019ve been able to engage with and they\u2019ve made incredibly brilliant work. It\u2019s not just because it needs to be \u2018diverse,\u2019 it\u2019s just that it makes the exhibit so much better.\u201d<\/p>\n